Fare Thee Well, Little Lady

The news didn't make the Boston papers, or any paper -- word only started drifting out on the Internet in mid-October -- but an important citizen of Munchkinland died a couple of months ago.

Olga Nardone, a Sleepy Head and member of the Lullaby League, went to her final rest on September 24 in Newton, Massachusetts. At 3' 4" she was often called "the tiniest Munchkin," though that's difficult to prove. She was 17 when Victor Fleming filmed "The Wizard of Oz" in 1938 (she was born June 8, 1921).

In a famous publicity shot of the Munchkins (above), the six-foot-two Fleming, standing next to Judy Garland and producer Mervyn LeRoy, looks straight at Nardone, and she beams back, poised as a dancer. (Fleming is holding Toto.)

Indeed, under the name Tiny Olga, Nardone danced in vaudeville, in a duo with another six-footer, the brother of her dancing teacher. Fellow Boston native Ray Bolger, before he was the Scarecrow, was her dancing teacher's friend.

She didn't know what picture she was up for when she got a call from an agent in 1938. "I didn't even want to go," she said in 2007. "But now I'm glad I went!"

When I was putting together my biography of Fleming, "Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master," she told my research associate, Kurt Jensen, "I was talked into it." She said, "My sister [Olinda] came with me because I told my family I wouldn't go unless my sister came." Her dancing teacher, Mildred Sacco, went along too, and served as a coach for the whole troupe.

Olga, Olinda and Miss Sacco stayed at an apartment, not the Culver Hotel, the scene of legendary offscreen shenanigans. But Olga was a key part of the on-screen myth-making.

Clad in a nightgown, she is the first Munchkin we see rousing to the sung command, "Wake up, you sleepy head/Rub your eyes/Get out of bed/Wake up, the wicked witch is dead." She's one of five Sleepy Heads who've been slumbering in a bird's nest. She and the other four were put there, she explained, "Because we were the only ones who could fit in that little nest!"

She was also lead ballerina in the trio of dancers from the Lullaby League, who perform on toe as they welcome Garland's Dorothy to Munchkinland.

A practiced professional, she pulled off her airy flourishes without much rehearsal. It took her a while to see the finished film, she said, "because I was back on the road already."

When I called to invite her to a book-signing party a year ago, she was too tired or ill to come to the phone. I wanted to thank her for her help.

But I also wanted to hear her real voice and regional accent. (Munchkin dialogue and songs were recorded by seasoned radio or cartoon voice performers at a slow speed, then played back at normal speed for that high-pitched Munchkin sound.) She resisted public interviews, so few knew how her Bostonian vowels affected her Oz pronunciations. Jensen told me she sounded a bit like Teddy Kennedy on helium.

In "Oz" she speaks with her posture -- and her toes. In the Lullaby League, she dances for Dorothy, and for the ages.

Article courtesy of the Baltimore Sun.